A Study On Entrepreneur Social Capital,Thinking Patterns Of Decision-making And New Product Performance

In an era of knowledge-based economy, enterprises are facing increasingly complex business environment, which has deep influence on strategic decision. At this time enterprises need to make fast and right decision in response to changes in the environment, which means to recognize the changing environment, seek opportunities for sustainable development. Therefore, the study on strategic decision-making attracts many scholars’attention. Existed literatures mainly analyzed the antecedents and consequences of strategic decision-making. The antecedents of decision-making research mainly included the environmental factors, organizational factors, top management team characteristics, decision-making patterns, etc. The consequences of decision-making research mainly included the enterprise performance, technology innovation performance and financial performance. Entrepreneurs as the participants, initiators, leaders of strategic decision, play a leading role in the strategic decision-making process, whose strategic decision behaviors have important impacts on firm performance. The research on entrepreneur focused mainly on the entrepreneur or top management team demographic characteristics, personality traits and cognitive characteristics which have impacts on strategic decisions, ignoring social networks embedded by the decision-makers as individual or team. Does the entrepreneurs’ social capital have an effect on strategic decision-making? What’s the mechanism of the influence? Based on this problem, this paper attempts to fill in the blank in this field.On the other side, many studies show that social capital is the key factor of affecting enterprise performance (including technical innovation performance). However, there is little research of entrepreneur social capital and new product development performance. New product development is the life line of the enterprise’s survival and development. How does the entrepreneur social capital influence the performance of new product development, the function mechanism and the interaction mechanisms are the important problems that the enterprise must deal with in the practice, which have important theoretical and practical significances.Based on the above issues, this study first reviews the relevant literatures of the entrepreneur social capital, thinking patterns of decision-making and new product development performance. First of all, we define clearly the relevant constructs according to research purposes and needs, analyze the definition, connotation and essence of the concepts. Secondly, build the theoretical model of entrepreneur social capital、thinking patterns of decision-making and new product development performance, and put forward relevant assumptions:Entrepreneur Social Capital and new product development performance are positively related, intuition and rational dimension of thinking patterns of decision-making have intermediary effects. Then, studying from the domestic and foreign variables’ measurement scales, we design the questionnaire. After collecting small sample tests,we modify questionnaires, and then get large samples of formal questionnaires. Finally we distribute240formal questionnaires, eliminating the questionnaires that were answered incomplete, or had obvious errors, we get180valid questionnaires. Using the SPSS software to verify the assumptions, the study draws the following conclusions:(1Entrepreneur social capital has significant and positive effect on new product development performanceWe can predicate that entrepreneur social capital and its business dimension and structural dimension all have significant and positive influence on new product development performance through the regression equation. Entrepreneurs and suppliers, customers or distributors, competitors or other corporate executives and government officials having good relations and cooperation will help entrepreneurs get more economic policy information, dynamic information of the industry’s development, the consumer demand information etc. If entrepreneurs grasp more accurate information of market, they will have higher quality information, and the new product development performance will also have improvement.(2)Entrepreneur social capital has a significant and positive impact on the rational dimension of thinking patterns of decision-making This study divides the thinking patterns of decision-making into two dimensions:intuition thinking pattern and rational thinking pattern, analyzes the relation of entrepreneur social capital and the two dimensions separately. Empirical study reveals that entrepreneurial social capital has positive and significant effect on rational thinking pattern. According to Simon’s bounded-rationality decision theory, entrepreneurs are often limited by the the restrictions of objective conditions, unable to grasp full messages. If entrepreneurs have more abundant of entrepreneur social capital,they will have more complete information and then choose rational thinking pattern of decision-making. Rational pattern plays an intermediary role between entrepreneur social capital and new product development performance. That entrepreneur social capital has a significant and positive impact on intuition, intuition plays a mediate role between entrepreneur social capital and new product development performance have no empirical data support.(3) Thinking patterns of decision-making and new product development performance is correlated, and regulated by variablesEmpirical test shows rational thinking pattern and new product development performance changes in the same direction. This validates the views of Rowe (1987), Scott and Bruce (1995) and other scholars’ research, that rational entrepreneurs can get better performance. Intuition thinking pattern and new product development performance is inverted U relation correlated. In the lower level, intuition and new product development performance are positively correlated, but at a higher level, if the entrepreneur only use intuition, paying no attention to the collection of data and information, will reduce new product development performance. Regression models reveal that experience positively regulates the relationship between intuition and new product development performance.Compared to stable environment,the relationship between intuition thinking pattern of decision-making and new product development performance is positively regulated under turbulence environment.At the same time, the interaction between rational and intuition has a significant and positive impact on enterprise performance. If entrepreneurs want to achieve better effect of decision-making, they need to use both of reason and intuition. The results will be better than using only one of them. So for many entrepreneurs, they will not need to choose from the two decision process, but to seek the balance of the two. The creations of this study may have:(1)This study integrates entrepreneur social capital, thinking patterns of decision-making and new product development performance into a theoretical framework from the view of enterprise’s innovation practice, and then establish theoretical paradigm suitable for our country, enrich social capital,strategic decision-making,new product development theory. At the same time through in-depth interviews and questionnaires from empirical point, we collect data, verify the mechanism between them.(2)This study views the relationship of entrepreneur and strategic decision-making from the social capital perspective. Existed research about entrepreneur social capital and strategic decision mainly focused on the psychological capital and entrepreneur human capital or some related research variables, they insist differences in entrepreneur demographic characteristics, personality differences or cognitive differences might indeed be the causes of enterprise strategic decision effectiveness, ignoring the social scene embedded by entrepreneur and social network what may have important influence when entrepreneurs make strategy decision. This study integrates the concepts of entrepreneur and social capital, analyzes the entrepreneur’s impact on the strategic decision from the perspective of social capital, and provides a new visual angle of the research of entrepreneur social capital and strategic decision-making.(3)Introduce the thinking patterns of decision-making concept. Study on the strategic decision-making process has been lagging behind the strategic decision of content. Previous studies comment on environmental factors, organizational factors. Studies on thinking pattern of decision-making process in China are just at the beginning, most of the studies are still on the concept description step. This study draws on domestic and foreign intuition and rational measurement scales, combined with actual situation of China’s enterprises, develops more comprehensive intuition and rational scales, and further defines the connation of them. This study views intuition and rational thinking pattern of decision-making as important variables, expand domestic previous theoretical results, deepen and develop the strategic decision-making process theory.At the same time, the study helps guide business practice and raise decision-making development.